Don't be fooled, friends, the latest increase in the cigarette tax has nothing to do with keeping tobacco out of the hands of children and making the state a cleaner, healthier place.

The government, still clinging to its noble pretense of public defender (read: uses our tax dollars to protect us from ourselves) has blatantly, and probably unlawfully, imposed what amounts to little more than a fundraiser, sponsored by the smoking public. The truth is that the state doesn't want people to quit smoking. In fact, it needs people to keep smoking--and preferably smoking more. Otherwise, the money raised by this tax would be used solely to fund its anti-smoking social engineering campaigns, not dumped into the general fund to be spent on who-knows-what.

The state legislature is taking advantage of the fact that cigarettes are addictive, and is unjustly singling out smokers because they are the one consumer group that is least likely to stop using its product and cut off the state's revenue. Profiting from the unhealthy addiction of its customers, which is exactly what the state is now doing, is what got the tobacco industry sued for billions of dollars. Private industry didn't get away with it, and neither should our state government.